01/18/12 Wearing and Selling Fur is Shameful!

Animal Friends organizes a protest as part of campaign "For Croatia without Fur"

- Activists in fur coats will stop in front of stores that sell fur with a clear message on fur

Although we live in the 21st century, individuals still show lack of sensitivity to the bloody origin of fur by wearing clothes and accessories made of animal fur. Wearing fur is not a symbol of good taste, style, elegance, glamour or belonging to high society, but tasteless and shameful adornment with someone else's fur and skin. Wearing fur shows a lack of empathy for more than 75 million animals, killed for their fur every year.

As part of "For Croatia without Fur" campaign, Animal Friends is organizing a protest against fur on Saturday, January 21, 2012, from 11 A.M., at Trg kralja Tomislava in Zagreb. The procession will go from Trg kralja Tomislava through Zrinjevac, Teslina, Masarykova, Frankopanska ulica, on the left side of Ilica to Primorska ulica and the right side of Ilica to Trg bana Josip Jelacica, where they will arrive at 12:30, then Draskoviceva ulica, Praska, Zrinjevac to Trg kralja Tomislava.

The procession will stop briefly in front of stores which sell fur and on Trg bana Jelacica, to point out that Croatian Animal Protection Act bans killing and breeding animals for fur, and asking for a ban on selling clothes made of animal fur. Activists in fur coats and with a paper bag on their heads, which will have a letter on it, will stand forming the word which tell what they think about selling, wearing and promoting fur.

The process of making fur coats is not in the least ethical or ecological. Animals bred for fur spend their entire lives trapped in tight wire cages, covered in filth, lumps of fur and other animals' feces, with wire cutting into their paws, and are constantly exposed to extreme weather conditions, hunger, thirst, stress and canibalism.

There is nothing humane about killing animals for fur. Before skinning their skin and fur, animals' necks are broken, poisons injected into their hearts, they are poisoned with gas or electrocuted by 240 volt, by an electric prod stuck in the animal's vagina or rectum, and a metal conductor in the mouth. Sometimes animals are only stunned and they are skinned alive.

Valuable resources are used for fur, large amounts of water, and it pollutes the environment. Animal fur, to be preserved, needs to be processed with toxic chemicals, which is why workers who work in the manufacturing process often get testicular cancer. Disposing of the bodies of skinned animals has disastrous consequences for the environment.

Killing animals for clothes and luxury is shameful and unjustifiable. We can be modern only by being humane and compassionate, and there is nothing but suffering and death in the fur of a killed animal. More and more reputable Croatian and world fashion designers removed fur from their collection, prompted by the knowledge that animal fur does not belong in 21st century fashion.

Breeding and killing animals for fur is unnecessary, backwards and heartless. Last year city of West Hollywood in California banned selling of fur clothes, the mayor of a tourist town Positano in neighbouring Italy banned the fur coat fashion show in Positano, and award-winning fashion designer John Bartlett has announced that he plans to be a 100 per cent vegan designer, whose collections will have no fur, silk, down or wool.

Animal Friends invites all citizens, public figures and Croatian media to condemn the cruelty and killing animals for fur, as well as selling, wearing, ant promoting fur, and to be as loud as possible in creating a Croatia without fur.

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Animal Friends is a non-profit, non-governmental organization, founded in 2001 with the aim to promote animal protection and animal rights as well as veganism, as ethical, ecological and healthy lifestyle.
Animal Friends Croatia is a member organization of EVU,
Eurogroup for Animals, ECEAE, FFA, IAFC and OIPA.